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Orioles vs. Rays and Mariners 5/8/11-5/12/11

The last few weeks have been pretty stressful for me, not to mention MLBlogs was down over the weekend as they switched to WordPress. Without too many details, I have been busy with health and school stuff, yet managed to go to 4 games while the blog has been not updated. I was at the final Rays game last Sunday as well as the 3 game series vs. the Mariners last week. Here are some highlights and photos from these games, along with some notes. But no, these are not nearly full game recaps like usual. Camera broken means less pictures and no time means less notes and action, so this should be quick, yet fun.

And wow. Looking at past blog entries, this new programming for MLBlogs really screwed up the layout of each entry. So sometime I’ll go back through and make the paragraphs look normal again on the old stuff. In the mean time…….

Sunday, May 8th

So this Sunday was special, as Zevi and I were running a fundraiser to support The Red Devils. People bought tickets from us, and proceeds are going to the organization. With major help from Romeo, we had over 100 tickets sold for the game, and it was a lot of fun seeing some old and new friends.

BUT. There WAS batting practice. But still recovering from the health issues just a day earlier, I caught one BP home run (no idea who) and then rested some while Matt took over. Zevi came late and snatched up like 3 or 4 balls somehow.

My goal on the day was to get Evan Longoria to sign the home run ball I had caught the day before. So after BP, Matt and I went down the 3B line to see what we could find. Oh, here’s a picture of Matt wearing Brandon Guyer’s batting gloves he had gotten the night before (like I mentioned in the entry):

Guyer got sent down that day before the game. I guess Matt caught him at the right time.

We watched the Rays pitchers hit some:

David Price hit a HR and did a HR trot (that people seemed to know of, but I didn’t realize he had one). Here he is finishing it:

Sam Fuld, Matt Joyce, and Reid Brignac came out to warm up (notice the pink bats and stuff):

And after the Oriole Bird’s mother took this picture with me (in which I look quite crummy and tired):

I got Evan Longoria to sign the baseball:

He wrote “2011 83” under it, since it was his 83rd career HR. He was quite rude to me about it, and I have lost some respect for the guy. As he took it to sign, he first rejected signing sweet spot, but that was to be expected from him. But when I asked him to write 83 on it or something of the sort (after explaining that I had caught it), he gave me a whole bunch of attitude, claiming that I was going to sell it or something. 30 seconds later, he took it back out of my hand and said something like “you know what, fine” and scribbled the numbers on.

Whatever. I like it. But the guy got on my nerves.

I also got Matt Joyce and Reid Brignac to sign my ticket:

More guys warmed up:

And a fun yet very tiring day with people. I left a little early, the heat and such were getting to me on very little sleep and new meds to make me all better, but was a positive day. Well, except that the Orioles lost 3-5.

I snagged 5 balls on the day. A Reynolds BP homer on the fly in LF, then 3 BP homers on the fly in the flag court during Mariners BP. The 5th ball? When I went over to sit with Brittany around the 3rd inning, I looked at the ground, and there was a ball sitting under the seats. Odd. Well, 5. Yet Tom the security guard, who’s hilarious and very nice to us, asked me for 2 earlier in the day (he gives them away), so here’s my 3 final on the day:

Zack even acknowledged my 3 flag court catches, so I was proud to beat out his lowly 1 :)

In the 9th, I got Luke Scott to chuck me his warmup ball out in left field, much to the dismay of Tim and Ben.

The O’s won, 4-2. WOOOO.

Thursday, May 12th

Todd Cook and family were in town for this one. Big Mariners fans. His blog entry isn’t up yet, but when it is, it will be cool. I just know it.

BP (that’s Peguero and Michael Pineda standing on the field):

I snagged one ball on the day, and barely. Brandon League chucked a ball up to fans, it fell, I grabbed it, but handed it over to the girl who had been shouting “it’s my birthday” for the last hour in hopes to shut her up.

She shut up.

Zach Britton pitched 9 innings of scoreless ball:

But so did Jason Vargas for the Ms.

The Orioles won, though, 2-1 in extras. SWEEEEEEEP.

That’s it. The stats will be up… sometime. They are so messed up I need to correct a bunch of them anyways. Here are some random other photos:

Zack and I going for a ball Boog was tossing to us:

Some of the balls from these games are here. Not sure which are which:

A silly photo of me jumping in the seats during BP (with Tim and Zack in it). But hey, I did make the catch. Sorry for showing so much skin. My bad.

And, here’s my favorite photo Zack sent me. Him and I walking to the flag court mid-BP one of the days. I just think it’s a cool shot.

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